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Wednesday, January 8, 2014

News From The Andover Innovation Lab/Help Desk: IPad Cart Updates & Preparing Our Final Projects-Getting Back In the Flow

After a great Christmas
break we are back at the Andover Innovation Lab and Help Desk ready to conclude
the projects we have been working on in the first semester and also updating
the IPad cart for the Science department.

The Science Department
at Andover High School has the amazing resource of a shared IPad cart which
includes 24 IPad for classroom integration of technology and 1:1 learning
opportunities. At a recent department meeting they collaborated and chose 18
new IPad applications to use in their courses. Amongst these was the app for
Gizmo's which enables students engage in a variety of interactive science activities
and the app for Prezi Presentations which will enable presentation creation
from the IPad. The department did a great job selecting apps which fit their
needs and classroom strategies. Apps like "Evolutionary Biology",
"Ecosystem HD","Bridge Constructor”, and “Genetics Lab
Mobile" will engage students with content rich learning on the IPad.

Organizing and adding
these new applications to their shared IPad cart is the where the role of the
help desk students come in. Viabhav Patel and I (Dan Downs) spent about an hour
and a half with the cart adding the applications to the Science Departments ITunes
account and then synching all the applications to the IPad. This is also an
opportunity to check the status of the charging of the IPad and the
MacBook laptop which is used to streamline this process.

It is great to have
students as part of this process and enables them to not only see the
connection of their learning at the help desk to the needs of the teachers in
the classroom.

After completing the
update Viabhav also had time to do a blog entry for the Innovation Labs blog on
the video series related to better helping teachers understand Minecraft for
use in educational environments. Viabhav has done a great job balancing his
time between working on his own independent project and assisting the needs of
teachers who have the benefits of a variety of new technologies in the
classroom.

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About Me

Educator focused on the development of technology curriculum which embraces 21st Century Skills,Project Based Learning and Authentic Assessment.

Professional experience includes working with students and teachers of all levels(K-12,Higher Ed) to develop technology driven final projects in the classroom using web based tools and multimedia software. Experience also includes developing MOOC environments and web based courses.

Professional development experience includes teaching teachers of all levels in the areas of technology integration,curriculum and instructional design.

Available for consulting and curriculum development projects related to Mobile Application Development,E-Learning,Project Based Learning and 21st Century Skill initiatives.